As a local church how do you engage and inspire artists?
Tuesday we begin a set of interviews with four different art centers that were started by, based out of, or sponsored by local churches in four different cities:
The 930 Art Center in Louisville
The Luminary Center for the Arts in St. Louis
Harrison Center for the Arts in Indianapolis
Salt Art Space in New York
Each of these art centers is different and engages & cultivates the arts in their city in a unique way. If you are a local church leader that wants to start an art center or simply wants a better way to interact with artists in your area, be sure to tune in.
Why should we engage culture & the arts?
Thursday we begin a discussion on the theology behind art & culture – and why it’s so important for Christians to engage & create culture.
Win a copy of Culture Making
At the end of the week, we’ll pick a winner at random from all comments submitted this week. Culture Making is a must-read for anyone who wants to inspire or be a part of a movement of cultural creativity. Simply comment on any article posted this week, and you’ll be automatically entered.
How One Church Reads Culture
But first, we’ll start with a video that demonstrates how one local church plant, The Line a new church in Chicago, takes seriously the call to be a missionary presence in their culture.
“The church looks like the very best, redeemed facets of that culture. It’s a city on a hill. It’s a redeemed version of that people group, of that tribe. Because it is that, it has a unique voice back into the culture.”
Thanks for the feature, RTM!
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There are aspects of this video that are good, biblical, and important for Christians to understand. Yet I can’t help but wonder if it misses something. Is the church really just supposed to be a redeemed version of the culture in which we find ourselves? Is the question, “What should our church look like?” one that looses it’s meaning if we don’t draw our answer from Scripture? The church is first and foremost God’s chosen people, his bride. Our church culture is supposed to fundamentally reflect the heavenly culture of Christ’s kingdom. (Which of course draws on and expresses itself in a variety of ways.) There is much in this video that I find thought-provoking and helpful, but I fear that too much credence is given to human cultures and too little time is devoted to a careful reading of the Scriptures.
Very nice. I was reading recently about how our well meaning missionaries undermined the women’s cultural power in various African churches. Where the women culturally had economic power, the western misisonaries came in teaching the women to pull out of the economic side of family life and focus on child rearing. The results was not good. I am glad we are in a place where the what is working in a culture can be respected.
Tough task when we ask ourself what should our church look like?
God has designed it perfect and full of relevance and we draw several lines crossing the original draft and giving our “personal” touch and sometimes using the wrong pen…We must be aware that Christ will gather His “bride” and not the church which is completely different. There are ten brides and 50% of them will be left behind so it is time of awake for this tremendous end time revelation… Bless you all!
Ben: Good point, we do assume a lot of scriptural knowledge in the video. Maybe we could add some footnotes? Agreed church is supposed to reflect heavenly culture. The mistake comes when we think that we don’t bring our own culture along for the ride as well. We do and it isn’t bad.
I think about myself as an individual: Jesus loved and called me and is changing me daily. There are unique aspects of my person that He Himself created and isn’t going to destroy in the process of sanctification. Rather, he is going to redeem me. He is going to restore me to my original purpose. He is doing this not just for me, but for a technicolor sea of people from every generation, tribe, and tongue. In doing this He will get a kind of unique glory that comes when all of the members of His many-but-one, diverse-yet-unified body sing His praises.
Gwen: Funny — I almost included stories from my missionary friends (my father as well) about how the gospel confronts different things more sharply in different cultures. Sin is sin and underneath it’s all unbelief, but at times addressing it is complex.
Robert: Agreed. God help us all if we are building with no foundation or cornerstone!
inspirational video. well done.
Good points all around.
I think the tension we are called to strike is the same tension in any kind of translation work. A good translation (whether it’s a translation of the Bible, Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic into English or a translator of a modern language) has to be both 1. Faithful to the original and 2. Understandable by the new audience.
This is also the tension of the Incarnation. Jesus in person was the perfect translation of God to human beings. Of course, as flawed humans we will tend to under or over contextualize as we take the gospel to new cultures, but the call is the same.
One eye on God, one eye on the people he loves.
The winner of a free copy of Culture Making by Andy Crouch is Ryan Stanley. Thanks Ryan for participating in the conversation on art & culture this past week at Rethink Mission.